Blog Recommendations from Bare Feet Clients

I've been having these fun interactions with our clients, in part to get them involved and excited about new media and fundamentally to have them pay atention to their invoices and pay us promptly!

This past month I offered Amazon.com gift cards to each client who responded by telling me at least one blog they read and why they love it. Most surprisingly, very few actually responded. Those who did though are over-achievers; many included more than one blog.

So here's some fun new linky love!

Knowledge is Bliss Marketing
I know it might sound self serving but I love creating my own blog because it makes me think about what kind of help my clients really, truly need.

Tim Ferris 4-Hour Work Week
I especially love tim ferris blog on the4 hr. work week. Oh don't I WISH!
- Alison Bliss

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Ask the VC
I read AsktheVC.com religiously because the posts come from real VC's, many VC's contribute (different perspectives) and it seems that the information is always relevant to our company and it is accurate.I have learned many things that I use regularly from AsktheVC.com.
- Andy Alsop, Packet Analytics and Network Security Blog

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Yarn Harlot
I read the knitting blog YarnHarlot.com every single day. I just love Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. She's the total Rock Star of the knitting world. She's funny and wry and I feel now like I know her personally.

Real Simple blog
I also read the Real Simple blog nearly every day, just bc I find it useful and the editor has a great "voice" that I feel is very accessible. Speaks to me as a working mom.

37 Signals
I also read the 37Signals product blog bc I'm obsessed with their products and the creative ways people use them. (Ed. note: we use the fabulous Basecamp software to manage all of our client projects.)

Bare Feet Studios
Oh, and I read, at least weekly, the Bare Feet blog. Those guys are pretty smart.
- Meredith Schwartz, Here Comes the Guide

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Dances with Wool
She calls it Dances with Wool, letters from the Arctic Circle. I love it because this woman makes the most beautiful knitted garments, something I aspire to. She posts pictures of her works, and of the gorgeous outdoors where she lives in Finland. She has a calm, quiet writing style, and I like reading her entries because it slows me down.
- Sharon Carl, Here Comes the Guide

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Scratchy Bottom Racing International
It's the diary of a Father-Daughter projectto buy and restore an old TR7 for entry in the upcoming "24 Hours of LeMons" race (dedicated to cars that would otherwise be on the scrap heap). The main blogger is a young lady who grew up with her car-obsessed father, and in the process learned more than her fair share of what's under the hood. She and her dad have great senses of humor, and a lighthearted appreciation of cars, car people, their dog, and of course each other. It's heartwarming in an atypical way. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!
- Jolene Rae Harrington, Here Comes the Guide

Getting Clients to Pay On Time

We are a small business. We invoice once a month, for services performed in the previous month. Our payment terms are "due on receipt." Some clients pay accordingly. Others have tended to lump us into the "net-30" category based (my ass-u-mption) on the terms they receive from other vendors. A few others appear to have a "squeaky wheel" folder, aka don't pay until someone is bugging them repeatedly to pay.

Years ago I contemplated putting up a web site called "theydontpay.com" that would serve as a sort of small business Dun & Bradstreet service. Small business owners could post their experiences of companies with a bad record of not paying, so other small companies could check out a potential client in advance. Back in those days, we had a few big names you would think would be an asset to the client list. But in reality, they had a high P.I.T.A. score often based on refusal to pay normal invoices. The concept was very similar to another social media site I recently discovered, RottenNeighbor.com. (I could have some fun there!)

Since I was too busy to do that, and am wary in general of putting out stink eye for all the world to see (I prefer Aloha), I decided instead to offer positive incentives. I've been having fun, but have to report that it has only made the good clients better and not the "bad" clients better. The first month was a 10% discount to the first payment received. We accept and encourage electronic payments so the first payment was delivered in less than 20 minutes by a nonprofit client, NAWBO. I reported that in my next monthly mailing.

The next time I offered a free $10 iTunes Gift Card to anyone who left a comment on our blog. This was to also help our clients get more comfortable leaving blog comments and hey, do any of you not love getting more blog comments?

Guess what? Only one person played. Meredith of HereComesTheGuide.com was stoked, and I extended it some because she actually left two comments! I sent her a 25 gift card that also donates 10% to AIDS relief in Africa. (I hope that link survives outside of my browser cookie settings...)

This month, I am offering a more generic BareFeetShop/Amazon.com $10 gift certificate and link love to all those who tell me about a blog they read and why. (And I even encouraged them to get staff involved.) Early congrats to Andy at Packet Analytics who replied in less than 15 minutes! I'll compile the results here in a few weeks.

Wish me luck. I'd sure like to find out what the tipping point is to get old invoices paid. (You know who you are, though I wonder if you read our blog. Please contact me privately to tell me about your sweet spots.) I am all ears to the rest of you who have fun ways to help clients pay on time and feel so good about it they'll want to do it over and over again.